This article explains why the deliberative version of democratic theory is problematic and paradoxical, and therefore, inadequate to develop the current democratic institutions or to replace them completely. It’s a problematic theory because it rests on epistemological assumptions that are hardly defensible. It’s a paradoxical theory because, although it asserts being socially inclusive, the model of public deliberation considered desirable can only be followed by certain kind of people, and not by all; in this sense, this theory is elitist. But also because although it states that the decisions on fundamental issues for society should be taken in political spaces that are representative, whose members are directly chosen through elections by society at large and whose functions are known to the general public. However, it also considers necessary that the decisions taken by those spaces should be revised in other political spaces that lack those special features. In spite of this, this theory presents an image –that of the judge, that when exercising the judicial control of legislative decisions wonders what decision would people have reached if they had deliberated adequately about the subject at hand – that blends with other contemporary legal images about how a judge reaches his decisions, and therefore will continue to gather strength in Colombia’s legal system.